Physical Database Design and Tuning

Chapter 20

Physical Database Design and Tuning

_In the last chapter we discussed various techniques by which  queries  can  be  processed  efficiently  by  the DBMS. These techniques are mostly internal to the DBMS and invisible to the programmer. In this chapter we discuss additional issues that affect the performance of an application running on a DBMS. In particular, we discuss some of the options available to database administrators and programmers for storing databases, and some of the heuristics, rules, and techniques that they can use to tune the database for performance improvement. First, in Section 20.1, we discuss the issues that arise in physical database design dealing with storage and access of data. Then, in Section 20.2, we discuss how to improve database performance through tuning, indexing of data, database design, and the queries themselves.